Childhood Trauma: Why You're Easy Bait

Those of us who grew up in dysfunctional homes tend to share common learned behaviors that make it easy for us to fall into toxic relationships. It’s like we have a big sticker on our forehead that says, “Toxic People, Choose Me!” Our survival skills cause us to fall into a trauma bond effortlessly. 

Let’s explore some of these learned behaviors that make you susceptible to a trauma bond so that you can enter into a relationship with eyes wide open.

9 Survival Skills that Prime You for a Trauma Bond

**If you don't know what I mean by "trauma bond," start here before reading how your survival skills cause you to fall into a trauma bond.

1. Self-Doubt

Growing up in a dysfunctional environment breeds self-doubt. When your experiences and feelings are constantly invalidated, you learn to question your own perceptions and instincts. 

As children, it is safer to assume that your perception is wrong than it is to accept that you are not safe and can’t do anything about it. This causes you to question and invalidate your gut instincts.

Impact:

• Ignoring Gut Feelings: Self-doubt causes you to dismiss your gut instincts that something isn’t right in a relationship. Asserting yourself is difficult and leaving feels impossible.
• Normalizing Dysfunction: You may convince yourself that the toxic behavior you are experiencing is normal or that you are overreacting. You gaslight and shame yourself for being “dramatic.”

Toxic people are drawn to partners who doubt themselves. It excuses them from taking responsibility for their actions and they can continue to exercise power over you with little resistance. Your self-doubt keeps you dependent on them.

2. People-Pleasing Tendencies

If you grew up in an environment where love felt conditional–based on your performance and willingness to enmesh with a family member, people-pleasing may be your primary survival tool. You learned to maintain peace, protect yourself, and gain approval through people-pleasing habits. As a result, you have become an expert in abandoning yourself and feel like a “bad person” for even considering having a boundary.

Impact:

• Self-Abandonment: You prioritize others' needs and desires over your own, often ignoring your own well-being.
• Difficulty Setting Boundaries: Constantly putting others first makes it hard to assert your own needs and boundaries.

Your lack of a healthy boundary system combined with your ability to abandon yourself signals to toxic people that having power over you will be easy. In other words, the abuse cycle of love bombing and abuse will be easy. 

3. Poor Boundaries

Dysfunctional families often lack clear, healthy boundaries, leaving you unsure of where to draw the line in relationships. In many families, enmeshment is confused for love. You most likely have a compassionate heart and will pour yourself out (even when your cup is empty) in order to meet the needs of others. 

Impact:

• Difficulty Saying No: You might struggle to refuse unreasonable demands or tolerate disrespectful behavior.
• Blurred Personal Limits: Without clear boundaries, it’s easy to become enmeshed in toxic dynamics, losing your sense of self.

The toxic partner learns that they can harness your compassion in a way that keeps you coming back to them despite their harmful behavior. 

4. Internalizing Responsibility

Growing up in a chaotic environment can lead to internalizing excessive responsibility for others' actions and emotions. You take on too much responsibility and have difficulty seeing how the other person contributed to the painful dynamic. You try to change yourself to keep the peace without requiring that the other person work on themselves as well.

Impact:

• Taking on Too Much: You may feel it’s your duty to fix or manage your partner’s issues, allowing them to evade accountability. 
• Letting Others Off the Hook: By taking too much responsibility, you enable your partner's toxic behavior.

5. Misinterpreting Intensity for Intimacy

When we grow up in dysfunctional homes, our nervous system develops a skewed baseline: chaos feels “normal” and it is easy to confuse intensity for love. In fact, the lack of intensity that you might find in a healthy relationship feels “boring” and unattractive. 

Impact:

• Distorted Love Perception: You might equate the highs and lows of a tumultuous relationship with passion and deep connection.
• Craving Drama: Stability may feel boring, while the emotional rollercoaster of a toxic relationship feels like love.

You are drawn to the toxic person who takes you on a relationship rollercoaster. It feels exciting and strengthens the toxic bond between the two of you. You most likely turn the other way when you see a healthy person and have difficulty feeling attraction to them.

6. Fear of Abandonment

If abandonment or neglect was a recurring theme in your childhood, the fear of being alone (especially emotionally) can be overwhelming.

Impact:

• Clinging to Toxic Relationships: You may stay in harmful relationships out of fear of being alone.
• Tolerating Abuse: The fear of abandonment can make you more willing to endure mistreatment just to avoid being left.

This can be one of the hardest parts of leaving a trauma bond. We are terrified of being without a partner, so we stay.

7. Seeking Validation

Childhood trauma disconnects us from our core selves, and as a result, we look outside of ourselves for validation. We let others define who we are because we have lost touch with ourselves. As an adult, you are dependent on your partner to affirm you.

Impact:

• Dependency on Approval: You might rely heavily on your partner’s approval to feel worthy or valued.
• Vulnerability to Manipulation: This need for validation can make you susceptible to manipulation and control.

This form of dependency primes you for a trauma bond. They have the power to make you feel worthy or ashamed. Lovebombing makes you feel worthy and gives you the assurance that you are craving. As a result, their big shows of affection make it easy for you to ignore their harmful behavior. You are easy bait for manipulation.

8. Emotional Caretaking

If you had to care for emotionally immature or unstable parents, you might carry this caretaking role into your adult relationships. More often than not, unhealthy people attract other unhealthy people. Often there is an internalizer (who becomes the caretaker in the relationship) and an externalizer (the partner who has disruptive behavior and needs “fixing”). All of a sudden, there you are, poor boundary system, people-pleasing skills, and a huge capacity for empathy, all combined to make you a caretaker to your partner.

Impact:

• Attracting Dependent Partners: You may be drawn to partners who need "fixing" and derive your sense of worth from being needed.
• Neglecting Self-Care: Focusing excessively on your partner's needs can lead to neglecting your own emotional and physical well-being.

Your bleeding heart becomes your downfall because it lacks the boundaries and healthy sense of responsibility to remain balanced. You “love” your partner, but in reality, you are stuck in a parasitic trauma bond and feel guilty for thinking about leaving.

9. Repetition Compulsion

Unresolved trauma tends to come out sideways by recreating childhood family dynamics in our adult relationships. Our brains and bodies are desperately looking to resolve and heal those old wounds, so they unconsciously enter into familiar, unhealthy scenarios in order to work out what is still unresolved. 

Impact:

• Reenacting Past Trauma: You might seek out relationships that mirror your dysfunctional family dynamics, hoping to achieve a different outcome.
• Stuck in a Cycle: Without recognizing and addressing this pattern, you may find yourself repeatedly in toxic relationships.

It is easy to think that you are too broken for a healthy relationship when you find yourself in a series of rollercoaster relationships. The reality is that we are looking in the wrong place to resolve the trauma. Healthy, stable people will heal old attachment wounds, not toxic people.

Breaking Free from the Cycle

Building Self-Awareness 

If we want to stop falling into the trauma bond trap, we need to start recognizing these patterns. We need to understand the root of our behaviors and replace old survival skills with healthier coping tools. 

By addressing these deep-seated issues and developing healthier relationship skills, you can break free from the patterns established in dysfunctional families and build healthy, loving relationships.

If you are serious about this work, start here.

Setting Boundaries

Learning to set and maintain healthy boundaries is crucial. This involves recognizing your own needs and limits and communicating them clearly to others. Listen to your anger. What is it telling you that you need? Your anger is an incredible tool for getting clear on what feels good to your nervous system and what feels threatening. From there, you can begin to form boundaries.

Get a Mentor

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of healing in relationship. Like I mentioned earlier, the healing happens when we work out our trauma in the context of a healthy, loving relationship. This can be a healthy partner, but for many of us, that’s a catch 22. 

Finding a mentor, coach, or therapist is one of the best ways to heal these attachment wounds. Not only will they help guide you and equip you with the tools you need to heal, but they provide the unconditional support and acceptance that allows you to experience your vulnerability being received with compassion and unconditional acceptance. This is one of the most powerful tools in healing attachment trauma.

If you are ready to dive deep and unlearn the survival tools that draw unhealthy, toxic people to you, join our coaching program, where you will deepen self-awareness, gain the tools you need for setting boundaries, and receive all the hold-handing you deserve to heal.